David, who now works as a software engineer for Google says: “People stop playing because they lose interest, at least in my case — or when they get something more stable, or when they’re tired of grinding out a boring lifestyle. Counting really isn’t that fun. Counting is pretty much like operating as a robot, making bets according to math, and playing according to math. The swings are also something people don’t really like. One day there can be a positive swing and you go up $500 at a $5 table in an hour, and the next day you’re down that much in a mere hour and a half.”
In gambling slang “the grind” is how much cash a casino whittles away, however slowly, at players. For most normal people, the grind is the day in, day out chore of working hard, and though card counting might allow you to chip away slowly at the casino, and prove that perhaps the house doesn’t always win, like any full time job there’s really no avoiding the grind.